


The Amazing Hawkeye

by gth694e



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: FWP, Father's Day, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Gen, Happy Father's Day, pure fluff, sometimes the closest person to a dad in your life isn't your father
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 13:54:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4182339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gth694e/pseuds/gth694e
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the Hawkeyes spend Father's Day together.</p><p>aka Clint is a terrible dogfather, but he's not bad with kids.</p><p>Or at least, Katie-Kate seems to like him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Amazing Hawkeye

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would not even be a smidgen close to as awesome without the amazing Coriolana. Thanks dear!

Clint slumped on the couch, half asleep and half reading the captions as Dog Cops played on his flat screen. Lucky snuggled against his side, his head resting in Clint’s lap. He was making the post-pizza-eating snore that  Kate said  was because pizza was bad for him and probably clogged his sinuses or something.

The girl  sat on the other end of the couch, idly petting Lucky’s hindquarters as she scrolled through her phone. She had showed up without warning a few hours ago, armed with two meat-lover’s pizzas and the entire first season of Dog Cops on DVD. She had settled onto the end of the couch without making her usual sarcastic observations on his housekeeping, and once they’d finished the pizza, she’d sat through three episodes without a single fidget. If Clint had been less tired, he might have been worried.

The episode ended and Lucky sneezed, jolting Clint fully awake. Kate snorted. Clint glared at her.

“Well, this has been fun,” Kate said, pushing Lucky’s butt off the edge of the couch. The dog landed on the carpet in a boneless lump as she put her phone into her purse. “But I better head home now.”

Clint yawned and ran a hand over his messy blond hair, then caught sight of the Dog Cops DVD case. “Oh, uh, don’t forget your DVDs,” he said, leaning forward to grab the case off the couch. At a glance, it seemed only half the DVDs were in it. Crap, he was always terrible at that—remembering to put DVDs back in their case. He picked up the empty pizza boxes to see if the missing discs were underneath.

“Don’t worry about it.” The girl got to her feet and stretched, her back popping audibly. “They’re for you.”

“For…me?” Clint said. A gift? Okay, now he was worried. Kate looked fine--maybe grouchy, but that was Kate--which left him. He looked around uncertainly, examining himself for a wound he didn’t know he had. Katie-Kate was never this nice to him except when he was injured, and sometimes not even then. “Am I…dying?”

“God, Clint,” Kate rolled her eyes like the teenager she was. “You’re such a drama queen. You’re not dying. It’s just a gift, okay?”

Clint tried to think of a reason Kate would get him a present. “Is it…my birthday?”

Kate looked to the ceiling, her mouth moving wordlessly, as if beseeching God to deliver her from her clueless friend.

“It’s Father’s Day, idiot.”

“Father’s Day?”  Clint had been sleeping on and off for the last hour so his brain wasn’t working at full capacity, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t adopted Kate. Thought about it once or twice in the last year when things with the rest of the Bishops had been rough, but he was pretty sure he’d never mentioned it to her.

“Yeah, it’s a Father’s Day present. Happy Father’s Day,” Kate said. She pretended to dig around in her purse so she could avoid his gaze. “Hope you like it.”

She said it so matter-of-factly that Clint started to wonder. He’d been concussed twice in his last three Avengers missions and once last month in the basement of his apartment building (the maintenance access for the sewer lines had not been made for someone of his height); it wasn’t impossible that he’d lost some memories. But . . . “But…I’m not your father?”

Kate stopped pretending to look for her keys so she could stare at Clint. “Oh my God, Barton. How did they make you an Avenger? Do they not require, like, intelligence tests? Of course you’re not my dad.”

Well, now Clint was just more confused than when he started. At least dying or being concussed had sort of made sense. “If it’s Father’s Day shouldn’t you be with your, you know, father?”

“Maybe if he wasn’t a massive jerk,” Kate snapped. “Maybe if he was more like--” She cut herself off with an effort and pulled the keys to her Beetle out of her bag with an angry jangle. ”You know what? Never mind. I’ll see you later.”

She was practically to the door by the time Clint understood what she had just said. God, how could he be so dense? After he and Barney had been orphaned, he’d been desperate for a father. He’d craved that connection like it was air. And it had led him straight into Trickshot’s hands.

Katie-Kate, on the other hand . . . her dad wasn’t dead, but he was no prize, even before Kate had found out he was part of the same criminal organization that had tried to kill her once.

Clint caught Kate before she could slip out the door, grabbing her lightly by her wrist. “Hey, Katie-Kate.”

She stopped before his fingers even closed around her wrist, her other hand resting on the doorknob; but she didn’t look at him. Instead, she scowled at the ground, her expression pure teenage venom. “What.”

Clint stared at her speechless, trying to conjure the words to explain the tangle of emotion that filled his chest. But how could he explain how amazing she was? Kate Bishop wasn’t just good at a bow like Clint; she was also strong, competent, and scary intelligent. Where Clint Barton failed, Kate Bishop succeeded. And where it should have made Clint feel obsolete or bitter, that he was being replaced by a younger, better model, it instead made him damned proud to have someone so fucking amazing share his name.

“I would be honored to be your dad,” Clint said. “And any sane person would be honored to have you as a daughter.”

The girl looked up at him, half teenage indignation and half a little girl’s hopeful eyes. Clint gave her a small smile and added, “Of course, I would be your way young, super cool dad. Every other kid would be jealous.”

The little girl look disappeared completely into teenage disdain. “You’re like, super old, Clint. Get over it. You are totally old enough to be my average aged Dad.”

“You take that back!” He let go of her hand, and put his hand over his heart. “I’m way too young to be the dad of a twelve-year-old.”

“I’m eighteen! And you’re thirty-eight! That’s not even sketchy, Clint!”

“Twelve!” he said. “You’re twelve!”

Kate rolled her eyes and pulled open the door. “Whatever, old man!”

Clint held the door open while she walked through, then leaned against the frame to watch her saunter toward the stairs. Lucky trotted over and sat on Clint’s foot. He reached down to scratch the dog’s head with a half-smile on his face.

Clint Barton didn’t have any kids, and with his lifestyle, he didn’t think he ever would. But he had Kate Bishop, and that wasn’t a bad deal at all.

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, you can find me on [tumblr](http://the-feels-assassin.tumblr.com).


End file.
